Grande-Marlaska completes the perfect turn: from conservative judge to first line in Sánchez’s defense

The unexpected twists of the script that Pedro Sánchez stars in include the sudden defenestration of collaborators, the recovery for his cause of former adversaries in the party and, as of this Monday, the incorporation of a judge from the conservative sphere into his circle of “fixed” . Fernando Grande-Marlaska, whom many considered amortized in the Government, has been confirmed to direct State security in a third term.

Grande-Marlaska is one of the six ministers who survive of the 18 who made up the first Government of Pedro Sánchez, formed five years ago. The president is the one who decides, but Sánchez also exercises absolute power in the party, where no one would dare to convey to the general secretary the distrust that Marlaska’s past or some of his decisions generate in Ferraz.

Paradoxically, it is at the doors of the socialist headquarters where the possible permanence, today confirmed, of Grande-Marlaska in the socialist Government has been visualized in recent days. The minister has been the target of some of the most degrading insults heard due to his sexual condition. These attacks, along with others of a sexist nature against the ministers, make visible the Spain that Sánchez promotes in the face of the regression presented by those who demonstrate against the Government agreement. Those who have accused Grande-Marlaska of what seems to be an impossible use of riot police and those who have seriously insulted him for his homosexuality can keep their rhymes: Marlaska is still the Minister of the Interior.

The confirmation of the judge in the mansion at Paseo de La Castellana number 5 is the culmination of an unusual political leap. When Sánchez called Grande-Marlaska in 2018, the judge was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary at the proposal of the Popular Party. His name had been considered by the Rajoy Government for the State Attorney General’s Office. Marlaska was for everyone a prominent member of the judicial right.

Would Marlaska be a member of the CGPJ today, almost five years into his expired mandate, if he had not received that call from Sánchez? Would you have signed the statement that a majority of CGPJ members imposed against the amnesty law? These are questions that those who continue to distrust him in the socialist ranks have surely asked themselves and who, since this Monday, have even more reasons to make their comments in private.

The virulence of the attacks from the right and the extreme right against the judge have to do with the fact that those who utter them once considered Fernando Grande-Marlaska one of their own. This animosity has redirected some of the barbs that could have gone directly to the president against the Minister of the Interior. Like a black hole, Grande-Marlaska has attracted these attacks and disqualifications from the right and has spared Sánchez the presence in the headlines.

Although he has been discreet about his wishes, Fernando Grande-Marlaska is grateful to continue in the Government; The judge did not want to return to the National Court. The inclusion of him, once again, as head of the PSOE list for Cádiz in the last general elections, assured him a position as a deputy in Congress despite having no connection with the province.

Confrontation with Podemos

The idea of ​​placing a minister without a party card and a conservative profile as head of the Interior has in any case turned out to be an experiment that has brought moments of crisis. The first serious confrontation within the Executive between the socialist side and Podemos – at that time they were buried – was over immigration. Fernando Grande-Marlaska did not feel sufficiently supported by Sánchez in the face of criticism from his partners and thought about resigning. It was at the beginning of 2020.

The most critical moment for the minister came in the summer of 2022, with the death of at least 24 migrants in a massive assault on the Melilla fence. The minister defends that the events that caused the deaths occurred entirely on Moroccan soil, but journalistic information and the Ombudsman cast doubt on that version. It was raining in the wet: Morocco’s response to the medical care provided in Spain to the leader of the Polisario Front in June 2021 was to throw 6,000 of its nationals into Spanish territory, many of them minors who were returned without opening the corresponding file .

Sánchez remodeled his government weeks later, but Marlaska continued in the Executive. His secret dealings with the Moroccan Government would have saved him, some in the party claim. Others, that the one chosen by Sánchez as a substitute backed out at the last moment.

Pérez de los Cobos, pending matter

By then a second large crack had already opened in Marlaska’s mandate, with the name of the Civil Guard commander: Diego Pérez de los Cobos. The colonel became an icon of the right when he was chosen to coordinate police action against the separatist referendum in Catalonia on October 1, 2017. At the time, Pérez de los Cobos was not a strange agent for the PSOE. From the same command bridge of the Ministry that he occupied when he was sent to Catalonia, he had acted as a close collaborator of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, whom he became friends, in the process of the end of ETA. So much so that when Vox did not exist, the most ultra circles of the PP labeled him as a member of an alleged ‘Rubalcaba commando’.

The future of Pérez de los Cobos seemed set since one day in May 2020, Marlaska’s phone rang and on the other end was a senior official from Moncloa. The interlocutor had in his possession a report from the Civil Guard that linked the central Executive to the spread of Covid and Marlaska had not reported on it. The minister chose to immediately dismiss Pérez de los Cobos for not having reported progress in the investigation to the chain of command. Or at least, that was the third version Marlaska offered in a week.

The dismissal, signed by the director of the Civil Guard, did not include a reason because it was a position of trust. Pérez de los Cobos went to court and the National Court ended up agreeing with him and considering his dismissal illegal. Later the Supreme Court did so and last October the colonel returned to occupy his office in the Tres Cantos Command. Marlaska did not seem to care about the setback and insisted on not promoting Pérez de los Cobos to general, despite being number one in the ranks, in three different calls. The Supreme Court has already forced the Civil Guard to repeat the three promotion contests after the colonel’s appeal.

The minister’s department insists that it is a formal issue that they will resolve, thus suggesting that Pérez de los Cobos will not be a general. The internal conflict that will continue in the Civil Guard, as well as the judicial one, with the foreseeable resources of Pérez de los Cobos, are not something that seems to worry Pedro Sánchez.